Wayne County Flag Day Rally

“Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem.” Ronald Reagan said it in 1981, but 28 years later this wisdom is lost on us. We have instead bought into the oldest and most elegant of lies, that letting some men decide everything improves on every man deciding for himself.

While some might call it new or reform, it’s the same tired old idea of substituting politics for capitalism, privileges for rights, tyranny for liberty and serfdom for self-reliance. It’s never worked, but the idea men can create a perfect world, if we just put the right men in charge, is a powerful lure.

This awful idea raises its head every few generations as memories of collectivism and its enticing falsehoods fade. We have already largely forgotten the totalitarian nightmares of the 20th Century – all built on the principle of the “common good before individual good.”

Someone says “save the planet” and, without thinking, we reply “why not,” implicitly buying into schemes to control where we work, how we live and what we can buy.

We ignore the utter incompetency of government and all the previous schemes that collapsed of their own weight, taking for granted the free market that has created a quality of life unmatched in the history of the world.

We imagine it’s possible to control anything and everything, even the sun, to improve on the heavens.

We let ourselves be lured by the promise of free health care without bothering to ask why Canadians, who have it, come here for health care when their lives are at stake. We blind ourselves to the implications of Oregon’s refusal to fund end-of-life care combined with its offer of free help with assisted suicide.

We are oblivious to the price of free health care, the loss of the greatest of our civil liberties, the right to make one’s own health care decisions and to keep private the most private of all personal information, one’s medical records.

And, so we are confronted with a government determined to control every aspect of our lives even though it’s made a mess of everything it’s tried. What are we do?

The answer will not be found in more efficient government, nor from some new leader or different brand of leadership. It will only come from us saying “NO MORE.”

If we don’t want politicians coercing money from us to throw back at us as programs for which they take credit, we must stop rewarding them with thanks them for bringing home the grants. We want nothing to do with their self-serving redistribution of the fruits of our labor. We want them to leave our money with us. We can spend it better than any bureaucracy. Imagine what would happen if, the next time a politician came here to hand over a check we simply spoke up and said “Do you think I don’t what you’re doing?”

We must also stop playing defense. We’re not interested in making government work better. We want less of it. Less government IS better government. We want politicians to slash public employment, stop regulating our light bulbs, get out of the mortgage business and obliterate every other non-essential program.

We don’t want them to restrain the cost of government. We want them to cut it back as we must do. We want them to lay off staff, reduce services and repeal codes, letting freedom ring.

We believe in individual choice, not policy. We want rationing of government, not health care. We’re tired of politicians pretending they’re helping us by imposing insurance mandates that raise the cost of health care and create the excuse for more of their meddling.

We’ll decide what we need and what we’ll buy. We want politicians to get their hands off our health care, out of our pockets and away from our children.

We don’t want guaranteed services – we want the individual liberties our Constitution guarantees – guarantees that have made America the best place on Earth.

We must tell our leaders government isn’t a public good, it’s a necessary evil and their job is to do as little of it as possible. If they say they can’t do it, they’ve been there too long, which brings me to my final point.

What makes a politician think they’re a public servant when they’ve made government their career? Let’s end that charade. Public service is my neighbor giving his time to his church or fire company or serving on a volunteer board. It’s not the self-aggrandizement of some Congressman or Senator.

We must put the governing class genie back in the bottle and return to the ideal of the citizen legislator. Term limits are essential. But, we’re only going to get them if we demand them individually from our friends and foes alike.

We must, from time to time, tell every elected State and Federal official; “your time is up, now go.” Given what’s been happening over the last year, the time is now up for a lot of them.

If we cannot do this, we deserve the government we get. This is our challenge and what it will take to restore power to the common man. So go forth, speak up and say “NO MORE!” Tell everyone you meet, especially your elected officials; “government isn’t the solution to the problem, it IS the problem.”